Have you ever been told you should work on your weaknesses because you already know your strengths? Well, today I’m going to offer you some contradictory advice.
I’m going to tell you to work on your weaknesses within your strengths.
What?
‘What’ is right.
Let me explain: A friend of mine markets his business using a number of different mediums…
Fax
Internet
Classified Ads
Direct Mail Postcards
And a handful of others
Now, recently he measured where his sales were coming from. And the majority were being generated online from the internet. His quarterly statistics looked something like this:
Internet Income: $31,000
Classified Ad Income: $0
Fax Income: $5,000
What do you think he should do? Well, let’s take a look at the additional income he could generate if he could improve any one of these areas by 20%:
Internet: $6,200
Classified Ads: $0
Fax: $1,000
Makes sense doesn’t it? Sure. The internet already generates strong results for my friend. But there are certainly areas for improvement.
Let’s break take a look at what would happen if he lifted his results in a few different areas:
1. Subscription / Squeeze Page: 20% lift
2. Sales Copy To Quote: 20% lift
3. Increase Visitors: 20% lift
For the sake of simplification (and to protect my friend’s figures) let’s make up a few numbers:
Current Visitors: 700
Current Conversion On Squeeze Page: 10%
Current Conversion To Quote: 10%
As a result of this, he’d be generating 70 subscribers a week and converting 7 of these subscribers into clients.
Let’s take a look at what would happen if he could generate a 20% lift in each of these areas:
Current Visitors: 840
Current Conversion On Squeeze Page: 12%
Current Conversion To Quote: 12%
Now he’d be generating 100 visitors per week (an increase of 30 visitors per week) and 12 quotes per week. He has increased the number of quotes he’s generating by 71% (and consequently his turnover) as a result of a 20% shift in each of these three areas.
Based on this, his quarterly turnover from the internet would jump from $31,000 to $52,700. A $21,700 increase which is four times the amount he was making as a result of his fax streams – simply from increasing the weaknesses in his strength by a mere 20%.
Your priority for this week should be to analyse where the majority of your business is coming from:
If it’s from the Yellow Pages – how can you increase the results of your yellow pages ad?
If it’s from walk by traffic – how can you increase the amount of walk by traffic you generate?
If it’s from word of mouth – how can you increase the number of referrals you generate?